The Harmony of Illusions
Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Seiten
1996
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-03352-5 (ISBN)
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-03352-5 (ISBN)
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This text discusses the malady of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is part history and part ethnography, and includes a detailed account of everyday life in a psychiatric unit specializing in the treatment of Vietnam veterans.
As far back as we know, there have been individuals inca-pacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder". Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomemon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions, a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilising these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in a psychiatric unit specialising in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD.
To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the tran-scripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
As far back as we know, there have been individuals inca-pacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder". Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomemon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions, a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilising these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in a psychiatric unit specialising in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD.
To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the tran-scripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Allan Young is Professor of Anthropology at McGill University, in the Departments of Social Studies of Medicine, Anthropology, and Psychiatry.
| Zusatzinfo | 5 line drawings |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | New Jersey |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 197 x 254 mm |
| Gewicht | 680 g |
| Themenwelt | Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Neurologie |
| Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Notfallmedizin | |
| Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Psychiatrie / Psychotherapie | |
| Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Humanbiologie | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-691-03352-8 / 0691033528 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-691-03352-5 / 9780691033525 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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